In honor of Kendall's birthday, with help from Elizabeth Harmon, we've updated Kendall's biography.

About The. Rev. Dr. Kendall S. Harmon

Born in 1960 in Illinois and raised in central New Jersey, Kendall Harmon is a graduate of the Lawrenceville School. He experienced meeting Jesus Christ personally at age eighteen. Kendall went to Maine where he attended Bowdoin College. He was an active communicant at St Matthew’s, Lisbon Falls, and a chemistry major at Bowdoin. He graduated, Phi Beta Kappa and Summa Cum Laude, in 1982. He received seminary training at Regent College in Vancouver, British Columbia from 1982 to 1984, and Trinity Episcopal School for Ministry, from which he graduated in 1987. He met his wife, Elizabeth, a nurse at Allegheny General Hospital, during this time. From 1987 to 1990 he served as Assistant Rector of Church of the Holy Comforter, Sumter, South Carolina, where their oldest child, Abigail, was born.


The Harmons moved to Oxford, England in 1990. There, Elizabeth worked at the John Radcliffe Hospital and their two youngest children, Nathaniel and Selimah Marie, were born. In 1993 Kendall was awarded his Doctor of Philosophy from Oxford University, defending a dissertation on some twentieth-century theological explorations of the doctrine of hell.

Upon returning to South Carolina in 1993, Kendall was called to St Paul’s Episcopal Church in Summerville. The current rector, the Rev Michael Lumpkin, called him to serve as Theologian - in - Residence, a position he held from 1996-2001. His ministry during this period emphasized preaching, teaching, and writing, particularly in the area of eschatology, or the study of the last things. For example, he taught in parishes in the diocese of South Carolina on the film “Left Behind,” noting that while it raises important questions its answers are desperately wanting.

Dr Harmon’s writings have appeared in various publications within the Church, including Episcopal Life, The Living Church, The Anglican Digest, Church Times, and the Church of England Newspaper. Outside the Church his commentary has appeared in the Charleston Post and Courier, the Pittsburgh Post-Gazette, and the Cleveland Plain-Dealer. An edited section of his doctoral thesis, “Nothingness and Human Destiny: Hell in the Thought of C.S. Lewis,” appeared in The Pilgrim’s Guide: C.S. Lewis and the Art of Witness (Eerdmans, 1998).

Dr Harmon has served in many positions in the diocese of South Carolina, including those of member of the Standing Committee and Examining Chaplain. At the national level, he served as a deputy to the 1997, 2000, 2003 and 2006 General Conventions.

Since January 2002, Dr. Harmon has been serving as Canon Theologian of the Diocese of South Carolina and editor of the Anglican Digest , one of the largest circulation publications in the Anglican Communion. He is also assistant editor of the Jubilate Deo, the diocesan newspaper for the diocese of South Carolina, director of communications for the Diocese of South Carolina, and Assistant Rector of Christ/Saint Paul’s Yonges Island , South Carolina. Early in 2009 Kendall was appointed as the Anglican Communion Development Director in the Diocese of South Carolina. In his free time he edits the Titusonenine blog, a popular site for articles and discussion on religion, theology and culture.

Filed under: * Admin • * By Kendall • Harmon Family

Kendall & Elizabeth at Kendall's ordination:






preaching as a seminarian at St. John's Johns Island SC



Kendall speaking at the Plano gathering, 2003:

Filed under: * Admin • * By Kendall • Harmon Family

More wonderful pictures celebrating Kendall, his lovely bride Elizabeth, and their family:

Filed under: * Admin • * By Kendall • Harmon Family

Kendall's daughter Selimah got together with some of her friends from her acapella group to wish Kendall Happy Birthday:

Filed under: * Admin • * By Kendall • Harmon Family

As our family informant noted, Kendall can be very silly at times. Here are a few more pix from Kendall as he was growing up, with a few special shots celebrating Kendall's love of a good time, and his wonderful. infectious and well-known laugh! We've provided a few captions sent to us along with the pictures, but once again: creative caption submissions are welcome!


Kendall in elementary school:



Kendall is quite silly some times, here playing the "hysterical fan"



Kendall in high school:




He is known for his laugh - it is recognizable from a distance:

Filed under: * Admin • * By Kendall • Harmon Family

From Kendall's son Nathaniel:



we're hoping to get a higher resolution copy of this so that the text is visible - stay tuned

Update: Here's the text

Dad, You're 50! But remember it has its benefits:

-Your supply of brain cells is finally down to manageable size

Your secrets are safe with your friends because they can't remember them either.

In a hostage situation you are likely to be released first.

See! It's not that bad!

Happy birthday - N

Filed under: * Admin • * By Kendall • Harmon Family

Selimah, Kendall's youngest daughter has a lovely birthday greeting for her dad!

Filed under: * Admin • * By Kendall • Harmon Family

Thanks to a wonderful "guest elf" within Kendall's family, who shall remain anonymous, we've got some WONDERFUL pictures of Kendall we'll be sharing throughout the day as part of Kendall's 50th Birthday Bash. Creative captions are welcome!










This is a photo Kendall's mother loved of her two boys: Randall and Kendall (Kendall
is the older on the right)



Early practice for ministry?? As our informant noted, this is Kendall playing with his brother,
but it looks like baptizing!

Filed under: * Admin • * By Kendall • Harmon Family

In honor of Kendall's birthday, we've put together a quiz to test how well you know Kendall. Answers will follow later in the day, and there may be some clues posted throughout the day. We elves are open to suggestions as to what prize to award the winner!

1) Where did Kendall grow up?

2) When did Kendall meet Christ personally?

3) What college (university) did he attend? Bonus points if you know his major?

4) Where did Kendall meet his wife Elizabeth?

5) How many children do Kendall & Elizabeth have? Bonus points for names....

6) What was the topic of Kendall's PhD dissertation? Bonus points if you can tell where he earned it.

7) How many times has Kendall served as a deputy to General Convention from South Carolina?

8) How many dogs do the Harmon family currently own? Bonus points for name(s) and breed(s).

9) What are some of Kendall's favorite hobbies? [lots of room for creative answers on this one!]

10) What are Kendall's current positions in the Diocese of SC?

Filed under: * Admin • * By Kendall • Harmon Family

Abigail, Kendall & Elizabeth's oldest daughter, sent us her birthday message to her dad to share on the blog:

Filed under: * Admin • * By Kendall • Harmon Family

Kendall turns 50 today!! To mark this occasion, we elves, with the encouragement and collaboration of certain of Kendall's close family members, are hijacking the blog today, totally unbeknownst to Kendall! We have lots of fun surprises planned, so check back often throughout the day.

Filed under: * Admin • * By Kendall • Harmon Family

Comments are closed.

Kendall turns 50 today!! To mark this occasion, we elves, with the encouragement and collaboration of certain of Kendall's close family members, are hijacking the blog today, totally unbeknownst to Kendall! We have lots of fun surprises planned, so check back often throughout the day.

We'd like to invite all TitusOneNine readers to join in the celebration of Kendall's 50th birthday today. We encourage you to share your greetings, and best wishes on this thread. Even more, we would invite readers to share their appreciation of Kendall, a remembrance of some time you met him or heard him speak, a funny story... Help us all celebrate his life and ministry today by joining in!

Note: you can also honor Kendall by contributing to the open thread Kendall prepared for today and share your own favorite birthday memories.

Filed under: * Admin • * By Kendall • Harmon Family

For the Easter season and a major special occasion in the family, I am taking Monday and Tuesday off from full blogging and will be back Wednesday. There will be one open thread each day--thanks--KSH.

Filed under: * Admin • * By Kendall • * Culture-Watch • Blogging & the Internet

Just to let our readers know, for the sake of having a complete archive of Kendall's posts during GC09, we've worked hard to copy any posts from the blogspot backup blog here to the main blog. We have now brought over 45 entries from July 14 and July 15 which were not previously posted here. Since the posts from that day are quite significant - they include a lot of commentary on the passage of Resolution D025 - we suggest that readers take a moment to browse through the entries from both days to see what you might have missed while Kendall was only able to post at the emergency backup blog.

July 14th entries
July 15th entries

Filed under: * Anglican - Episcopal • Episcopal Church (TEC) • General Convention 2009 • * Admin

Kendall and we elves are thrilled to be back online after nearly 10 days of technical problems when we were forced to use two backup sites.

Kendall will be busy catching up with dozens of entries. We elves will be busy copying entries that were posted at our backup site on blogspot (http://t19backup.blogspot.com/), but have not yet appeared on the main blog. All entries that were posted on the temporary version of the blog (http://www.standfirminfaith.com/?/t19/index) appear below as normal.

We welcome any questions or reports of problems. E-mail us: T19elves@yahoo.com --the elves

Filed under: * Admin

This elf has been slacking lately and it is only today that it dawned on me that we need a new ACNA category on the blog. So from today onwards, you will now find all stories related to the ACNA here: Anglican Church in North America (ACNA)

News stories, primary source documents and commentary specifically about this week's ACNA Assembly will be found here: ACNA Inaugural Assembly June 2009. (we have re-categorized relevant blog entries from the past week or so)

All past blog entries about the ACNA from the past 6-7 months are under this category: --Proposed Formation of a new North American Province

Filed under: * Anglican - Episcopal • Anglican Church in North America (ACNA) • ACNA Inaugural Assembly June 2009 • Common Cause Partnership • --Proposed Formation of a new North American Province • * Admin

A quick note from the elves: I'm not quite sure when he did it, but at some point in the last week or so, Greg G. solved the problem we've had for several months with links in the comments. You can now post embedded links in the comments again. Thanks Greg!

Using our blogging software, Bulletin Board code generally works better than traditional HTML anchor tags. The way to make a link is this:
1) In square brackets, type "url=" (without quotation marks) and then paste in your URL link
2) Give the link any reference or title you want
3) And then to close the tag, in square brackets type "/url" (without quotation marks)

To make a link to TitusOne Nine it would look like this:
[url=http://www.kendallharmon.net/t19/]The best blog on the internet![/url]

With the result being this: The best blog on the internet!

Filed under: * Admin

Given all of Greg's hard work in switching the blog to a new server, it seems only fair that this lazy elf who helps with some of the tech and admin tasks here at T19 get busy and do some much much needed and long-neglected work on the T19 sidebar to update links and make finding things around the blog somewhat easier.

We plan to devote a few hours a day today - Sunday to being available to update broken links and make a few other needed changes. We welcome suggestions as to what needs fixing or improving, particularly if there's still anything that needs to be updated following the server move. Leave a comment or send us an e-mail: .(JavaScript must be enabled to view this email address)

Filed under: * Admin • Blog Tips & Features

Thanks to Greg for his perseverance in the face of serious unexpected database and domain forwarding issues!

It looks like T19 is pretty much back online. Though there may be some hiccups with links to individual entries or subpages that are still working through the system. Feel free to comment here or e-mail us elves if you are having problems or notice something that is not working properly.

T19elves@yahoo.com

Filed under: * Admin

If you're reading this, you're seeing T19 on our new server.

Took about an hour longer than I had anticipated, but all in all things went pretty smoothly. Thanks to everyone for their patience.

Filed under: * Admin • Blog Tips & Features

As many of our readers know, TitusOneNine shares server space with StandFirm. Greg Griffith has done an incredible job in ensuring the uptime and reliability of both blogs. As part of his commitment to managing for growth, Greg has planned to migrate Stand Firm and T19 to a new server this weekend. You can read all the details over at Stand Firm. The main things our readers need to know are:

What this means for the Stand Firm and TitusOneNine communities... is that I anticipate we'll probably spend the better part of a day offline, beginning some time between Friday evening and Saturday evening. User commentary is the pulse of these two communities, and because the server change will not occur for all users at the exact same time, at the beginning of the move we're going to shut off comments here at the current server in order to ensure that none of the conversation is lost.

Please note that there is nothing you can do to hasten the transition on your computer. It is a function of a vast network of "domain name servers" distributed all over the world, some of which receive and implement the switchover instructions earlier or later than others, and sometimes the difference can be several hours or even a day or more.

Read more

We'll keep you updated with any further details as we get them from Greg. Thanks for your understanding in advance.

--elfgirl for all of the elves. (We'll try to assist in any way we can though we're not directly involved in anything to do with the server move.)

Filed under: * Admin

Just a note to let readers know that due to travel of one elf and the combination of work pressures and serious "technical difficulties" of a second, our elfing capacity is seriously limited this week (and in fact has been stretched way too thin for 4 or 5 weeks). It looks like I (elf girl) may be restored to normal high speed internet access within 2 - 3 days and so I hope to be able to resume more normal "elfing" then. In the meantime:

1. We please ask our commenters to be particularly careful of what you write. Perhaps a policy of "self-elfing" could be practiced?
2. If you have story ideas, please send them directly to Kendall (his e-mail is linked on the sidebar under the "About the Blog" section).
3. Please be patient with any requests for administrative / technical help or research assistance. It's honestly likely that I won't get to look at those for another 2 days, and there is already a big backlog.

Thanks very much for your patience and understanding.

Filed under: * Admin

As we're sure many of our readers have noticed, we've had some issues with the timestamps of posts and comments being incorrect over the past week both here at TitusOneNine as have our friends and colleagues at StandFirm, with whom we share a server. Some comment threads have gotten quite confusing because the comment numbers and sequence have been unstable, with "replies" sometimes winding up above the comment which prompted the reply!

While our fearless tech leader is working on finding the cause and solution, we suggest you read this comment which I left on a thread earlier today. It offers suggestions on how to help minimize confusion in the comment threads should the sequence get jumbled (i.e. how to link to the comment to which you are replying).

Also, it gives you the link to the place in your account page where you can verify that your timezone and daylight savings time setting (if applicable) are correct.

Hope this is helpful. If questions persist, feel free to e-mail us at: T19elves@yahoo.com.

--elfgirl

Filed under: * Admin • Blog Tips & Features

Greetings T19 commenters,

Over the weekend we have had two threads which were rendered extremely difficult to read in some browsers by the posting of long links that overflowed the boundary of the comment box and caused subsequent comments to also runover into the sidebar. Unfortunately this elf who normally handles most of these types of tech problems was offline from Thursday afternoon - midday Sunday.

A couple of suggestions/requests:
1) Please avoid pasting long links in the comments. Learn how to use sites like tinyurl.com, or how to make a link using the bulletin board code (a kind of simplified HTML code) specified in the "help" section of the comment box. If you need help, feel free to e-mail the elves and we'll be glad to assist.

2) If you notice a thread where there is an overflow comment that is messing up the formatting, please send a heads up to the elves e-mail box: T19elves@yahoo.com

Often, even if we don't have time to read the threads, we do check the e-mail. That way any of us elves or Kendall can fix the offending comment and the blog formatting will be restored.

Thanks!

--elfgirl

Filed under: * Admin

Good morning all.
Because we were offline most of yesterday from mid-morning onwards, when we logged in this morning, we had quite a full inbox and many of those queries concerned Anglican Mainstream and the problematic link Kendall posted yesterday to "CoE, Who's In, Who's Out?"

It is our understanding that Anglican Mainstream is in the middle of a site transfer, so the website access problems you are having are not due to hacking.
We'll keep you posted as to when they are back online and any new bookmarks that might be needed.

In the meantime, via Google's Cache, we were able to pull up the article Kendall had posted that was no longer available via the link he included. You can find it in the comments below: http://www.kendallharmon.net/t19/index.php/t19/article/9193/#171042

--elfgirl

Filed under: * Admin

We've unstickied the long San Joaquin discussion thread. You can find it here.

Filed under: * Anglican - Episcopal • Episcopal Church (TEC) • TEC Conflicts • TEC Conflicts: San Joaquin • * Admin

Comments are closed.

It occurs to us in the busyness of life the past few weeks, we elves have been seriously remiss in not posting the links to the alternate (backup blogs -- perhaps soon to be permanent blogs) of many of the Anglican sites hosted by Classical Anglican Net which suffered serious hacking about 2 weeks ago, and which is still offline as a result.

Mike Daley of CaNNet is still working to restore the blog databases and partitions, and hopes to have the blogs backup as soon as possible, perhaps within a few days. But in the meantime, please note these links. Our apologies for the delay in posting these!

Brad Drell: http://descant.wordpress.com/

Confessing Reader: http://confessingreader.wordpress.com/

Lent & Beyond: http://anglicanprayer.wordpress.com/

Rather Not Blog: http://idrathernotsay123.wordpress.com/

Surrounded (Diocese of San Joaquin): http://sanjoaquin.wordpress.com/

As for the archives of the old Titusonenine site, most posts can be accessed either by using the Google Cache feature, or by using an internet archive site like "The Wayback Machine." Feel free to e-mail the elves if you need help finding something or accessing something on the old blog.

And please keep Mike Daley in prayer as he works to restore the CaNNet blogs. Even if all or most of the blogs make the switch to new sites, having access to their archives is important. Thanks.

Filed under: * Admin • * Resources & Links • Resources: blogs / websites

It wasn't until clicking the links on a posting at Stand Firm earlier today that we discovered that the Diocese of Michigan has posted an editorial about TitusOneNine's post of a picture from the Diocese of Michigan's convention.

Here's what the Diocese of Michigan wrote:

There was a spate of criticism—unfounded, I found—from a corner of the conservative blogosphere about a snapshot of our diocesan convention that showed the placard of the eight MDGs behind the altar during the Eucharist. If you must investigate further, you’ll might find the discussion HERE. If the blog thread is removed, better judgment may have slipped in upon them before this commentary did.

The bloggers misinterpreted our intention—as gently suggested online by a priest in our diocese—thinking we had replaced the crucifix with the MDGs. The rambling comment section devolves to less-than-insightful rants on Karl Marx and the United Nations. But the kernel of concern is worth reflecting upon.

The millennium development goals are not canon; they are invitations into deeper relationships, deeper understanding. In order to embrace the mdgs—or rather be embraced by them—we must prepare ourselves not to march triumphantly but to walk humbly. We must truly empty ourselves of those things that lead us to feel haughty. Like a Pharisee. With a blog.

Even though the author, presumably Diocesan Communications Director Herb Gunn, criticizes TitusOneNine in that piece, I don't believe he contacted us or left a comment about his concerns, so this is the first we'd heard from the Diocese of Michigan. (It is possible of course that Mr. Gunn contacted Kendall without my knowing.) As I made clear in the post in question, as one who tries to help Kendall cover the diocesan convention news, I (elfgirl) was responsible for the post, not Kendall. So let me offer a few comments in response.

First, Mr. Gunn confuses "bloggers" and "commenters." He accuses the "bloggers" (that in this case would be me, elfgirl) of saying or intending something we never said or intended. In fact we explicitly stated our intentions several times on the thread itself, and provided many supporting links to further the discussion along the lines of what we had intended.

Secondly, I never claimed the MDG banner was a deliberate replacement for the cross. I made no comment about the intent of the Diocese of Michigan. I merely noted that I found the photo "irresistible" as a striking visual image. In fact, I acknowledged previous comments that the juxtaposition and symbolism was probably unintentional.

We (I) always acknowledged the fact that the actual intent was probably not to have the MDG banner as a reredos, but that the unintended juxtaposition, and the Diocese of Michigan's prominent photo on their convention coverage page, symbolized a larger issue. Unfortunately Mr. Gunn didn't take the time to respond to any of the substantive concerns (about the mission priorities of TEC, not the Diocese of Michigan's convention, per se) raised in the comment thread. Instead he pretty much dismisses the whole entry and caps off his editorial with an insult. The talking past one another continues.

--elfgirl

Filed under: * Anglican - Episcopal • - Anglican: Commentary • Episcopal Church (TEC) • TEC Conflicts • * Admin

Comments are closed.

Hi all. As we noted in the comments on one of the threads below, we were having trouble accessing the Living Church's website earlier today. We've since learned via e-mail that those problems were due to a site upgrade. We've just now been able to get into the new site and it looks terrific.

Here's the news page link:
http://www.livingchurch.org/site/news/

Here's a section for online exclusive features:
http://www.livingchurch.org/site/news/exclusives/

We're still having trouble accessing the TLC home page: http://www.livingchurch.org/, which is taking us to the TLC's hosting company instead. It may just take awhile for the site upgrade to "propagate" throughout the web, or we might need to clear out our browser cache.

Be sure to update your bookmarks for the new site. (The news page link is new, for instance). It looks terrific! Congrats and thanks to the TLC team.

Filed under: * Admin • * Resources & Links • Resources: blogs / websites

We seem to be having an increasingly frequent problem with folks pasting in URLs that are too long for the width of the comment box, which then blows out the margins and makes text overflow into the sidebar.

Thus, we'd like to request please don't paste long-links in the comments. If your link is long, use anchor codes to make a link. If you don't know how to do that, go to tinyurl.com and your long link will be transformed into a very short one you can copy and paste into your comment. Thanks!

Filed under: * Admin

As will be evident in this morning's entries (see the next 3 posts below), we're catching up on posting a batch of additional bishops' responses to the New Orleans' statement. Some of these statements are fairly new, some have been mouldering in our inbox for awhile. T19 and / or Stand Firm have now posted either excerpts or the full text to 40 bishops / dioceses' statements.

Note: BabyBlue has posted a list of statements we compiled last night. These are all the statements we've seen so far. (A total of 40 dioceses). So you can easily see what we're missing!

If your bishop has made a statement and it's not yet been posted, please e-mail us the text or the link: T19elves@yahoo.com

Thanks to all who are sending in such helpful links. Keep 'em coming.

Filed under: * Anglican - Episcopal • - Anglican: Primary Source • -- Statements & Letters: Bishops • Episcopal Church (TEC) • TEC Bishops • Sept07 HoB Meeting • * Admin

The great value of Titus One Nine to all of us, including this slightly to the left of center Episcopalian, has been the inclusion of all the "news fit to print" (and leaving out some which isn't) regarding the current challenges in the Episcopal Church. You have had the good grace to allow your readers to interpret that information as their intellect determined, until recently. In the days before the HOB meeting and subsequent to it there has been an increasing tendency to parenthetically comment on or reinterpret the input from various sources with whom you are not in explicit agreement. My belief is that this diminishes, not adds to, the value of the information. Many of your sources are unquestionably intellectually capable of making an interpretation of the current situation and the product of their efforts is their interpretation. Adding your editorial comment that they are in error in that interpretation is not terribly helpful as i t does not change their interpretation and they do have a right to that interpretation. It is no more right or wrong, inherently, than your own. So my advice is to go back to reporting the information and quit kibitzing.

But it is your blog and you are doing us all a considerable service by maintaining it, so thanks for that.

I would genuinely appreciate blog readers feedback on this, thanks--KSH.

Filed under: * Admin • Blog Tips & Features • * By Kendall

The servers are slowing down due to traffic. If you just want to check to see what's posted and what is drawing comment, PLEASE try using the "mobile" view -- headlines and comment totals: http://kendallharmon.net/t19/index.php/t19/mobile/

Oh: and it's probably a good idea to save your comment before hitting submit.

Update: we've reduced the number of entries displayed on the main page to 20. Just for today.

Filed under: * Admin

All we've had several reports that the T19 RSS feed is not working. It is working fine for this elf who reads the RSS feed in Bloglines. If you are having problems, please let us know what link you are using for your subscription, and what feed reader /aggregator you are using. Thanks.

This link is working fine for the elves in bloglines: http://www.kendallharmon.net/t19/index.php/t19/rss_2.0/
And this link is working fine for the Anglican News feed: http://kendallharmon.net/t19/index.php/t19/rss2.0_Anglican

Filed under: * Admin

Ok, all of you T19 fans out there HAD to know this was coming!! We're a bit slow on the draw, but yes, we've now created a blog category for the Sept07 HoB meeting. Here's the link.

So with one click now you can get all the latest news from New Orleans.

Don't forget, we also have an Anglican / Episcopal RSS feed.

Filed under: * Anglican - Episcopal • Episcopal Church (TEC) • TEC Bishops • Sept07 HoB Meeting • * Admin • Blog Tips & Features

Should page loading be slow for some readers given the heavy site traffic, try this:

To see the headlines at a glance, and the number of comments per post, go here:
http://kendallharmon.net/t19/index.php/t19/mobile/

Filed under: * Admin • Blog Tips & Features

To speed up page-loading and lighten the load on the servers in face of the extremely heavy blog traffic expected on T19 and Stand Firm for the next week or so, we've reduced the number of entries that now display on the main page. Instead of 50 entries, we've cut it in half to 25 entries per page.

You can still get to all the previous entries by following the link at the bottom of this page to view subsequent pages, or use the calendar at right to see all the entries from a given date.

We expect many visitors in these days. Should anyone be having registration problems, or need other technical assistance, please don't hesitate to contact us at T19elves [at] yahoo.com

Filed under: * Admin

Regular readers of the Anglican blogosphere, be they fans of blogs such as T19, Stand Firm, Drell, and BabyBlue on one "side" or EpiScope, Episcopal Cafe, Fr. Jake, and Susan Russell on the other "side," know things are buzzing right now. We're gearing up for the September TEC HoB meetings in New Orleans later this week (Sept 20-25), the Common Cause Bishops' Council in Pittsburgh immediately following, and the September 30 Dar es Salaam deadline. In some quarters, reports, responses, articles and pastoral letters are flying so fast and thick that it's dizzying and pretty much impossible to "read it all," no matter how often Kendall exhorts us to do just that!

But the buzz and news overload that those of us who follow the blogs are experiencing right now may be surprisingly limited in scope.

Your humble elf had more time for web browsing yesterday than any day in the last 2 months or so. It seemed like a good time to go on one of our periodic diocesan "news trawls." What is being said in the various dioceses that we don't hear from so often or read about much on the blogs? What responses have there been to the proposed covenant? What are bishops writing their flocks about the upcoming HoB meeting? etc. I knew from previous forays into diocesan website land that the results would be patchy. Some dioceses excel in timely communication, but many fail on that score. I expected that in a good number of dioceses the whole "Anglican crisis" and Dar deadline is being downplayed. But even I, an experienced denizen of diocesan websites, was surprised by what I found.

In the 4 hours I had free, I was able to visit the diocesan websites of 31 TEC dioceses. I focused on dioceses which I knew, from past experience, tended to have informative and relatively up-to-date websites. I purposely avoided some of the Network dioceses where there's been recent news and statements (such as Central FL, Fort Worth, San Joaquin, Pittsburgh, Quincy, etc.) We already know these dioceses are engaged in the current crisis. I tried to hit some of the biggest and most influential dioceses (Texas, Atlanta, New York...) and also many Camp Allen or reasonably moderate dioceses, as well as to get a good geographic mixture.

Here's a list of the diocesan sites I visited and what I found. A diocese received a "NO" if I could find nothing new about the TEC/Anglican situation since the March HoB meeting. (Legend: **Network diocese, *Camp Allen bishop)

Alabama - NO
** Albany - NO
Arizona - NO
Arkansas - NO
Atlanta - NO
California - NO
Colorado - NO
Connecticut - NO
** Dallas - YES -- a good selection of background links and resources, though most not very recent, nothing specific on the upcoming HoB meeting
East Carolina - NO
East Tennessee - YES -- a nice and quite current "Windsor Process" page
Florida - NO
Lexington - NOPE, surprising given +Sauls lead role in many recent reports, etc.
Los Angeles - Nothing since April
Massachusetts - NO
Mississippi -- YES. Pastoral letter from +Duncan Gray.
Newark - No
New York - Yes. Bishop's letter July / August (see p. 3), special 8 page insert in Dio. Newsletter
North Carolina - YES Big feature on "Communion Matters" meetings throughout the diocese on the homepage
* North Dakota - not really. A passing mention in Dio. Newsletter "pray for Sept HoB meeting"
* Northern Indiana - No (Bp. Little is on sabbatical, but will be attending HoB mtg)
Ohio - No
Rio Grande - YES Pastoral letter from +Steenson
SE Florida - Partial: Response by Executive board to Anglican Convenant (unclear if laity and parishes are engaged, however)
* SW Florida - Nothing new since May (surprising. SW FL is usually VERY current on news and info)
** Springfield - No
* Tennessee - No
* Texas - No
Upper SC - No
Virginia - NO
* West Texas - YES. Sept 2007 Audio message to diocese from Bp. Lillibridge

So, totalling up the YES column and the NO column:

Only 7 of 31 (or 8, if one counts SE Florida, which is somewhat borderline...) had anything substantive and current on the ECUSA/Anglican crisis. That's 25%. So of the nearly 1/3 of the ECUSA domestic dioceses surveyed (and I chose those which I know to have generally informative and regularly updated websites) it would appear that 75% of these dioceses are not getting out current info on the Anglican crisis. This includes Network dioceses (Albany and Springfield), and Windsor Dioceses (Northern Indiana, Texas, Tennessee, and SW Florida), as well as more reappraising dioceses. Big dioceses with lots of resources, and small dioceses. I have absolutely no reason to think that the dioceses I didn't survey are any better.

The lesson to draw from this: If you care about these issues and the decisions that lie ahead, share the news you read on this blog and others with your fellow parishoners, or friends in other dioceses, etc. Don't assume that the dioceses or other structures are getting the news out. There are many in TEC parishes who have no idea that there is a House of Bishops' meeting this week. If you care, share a few links and invite them to pray and get involved!

--elfgirl

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